The garden has ignited.
It's feverish. Even the white clematis
flutters with sun,

and the red lilies and coral bells
burn back at it. Windblown petals
of cardinals flash

across the buttery primroses:
a good year for gardens.
Everything shines.

I write this standing at my window.
I don't go down into the garden.
From here I see everything

at once, all the flowers trapped
in color, in their showy, slow
ignition - petal, pistil, leaf and stamen

separating off. Perhaps
there is a way
out of such fiery

gorgeousness. It must
be wearing. Even at night... Read more

What hierarchy of love and choice
shall have exacted it of us,
that to the shame of all our yearning
the body goes foul on its bones, beyond
its own or any pardon?
The sky already is quivering
with snow, and I think how it was
all summer the leaves of the McIntosh
were green as I have imagined ice
at the hearts of glaciers to be green,
while in July there were times
when, about to sleep, I might have sworn
that by morning the lawns would be stiff with frost,
the calendulas collapsed on their stems,
petals corollas of golden ice;
might equally have sworn... Read more